Ferrante Uses Familiar Devices to Hook Readers

Elena Ferrante is an author who has been getting a lot of positive press lately and not without reason. She's an incisive, but charming writer with a good story to tell.

I just finished "My Brilliant Friend," the first book in her Neapolitan Novel series, and while I greatly enjoyed it -- even though it was difficult to keep track of who was who from time to time -- I couldn't help but be struck by her use of a couple of very basic devices to first suck readers in and then to get them to purchase the next book.

Are Corporations, Society or Writers Killing Literature?

This post is about three writers offering differing views as to why literature appears to be dying.

"The Big Five publishing houses are located within a few subway stops of each other in Manhattan; that rich island which represents 0.000887 percent of our country’s surface. This is not benign. Our literary culture has distended and warped by focusing so much power in a singular place, by crowding the gatekeepers into a small ditch of commerce. A review in the Times trumps everything else. You can’t tell me that this doesn’t affect what is, finally, bound into books, marketed, and sold. Which designates what can be said and how one says it. Why do we cede American letters to a handful of corporations that exist on a single concrete patch?"

So says Matthew Neill Null, a prize-winning author and native of West Virginia.

The lengthy quote comes from an article published by "Literary Hub" wherein Null complains that publishers aren't interested in stories based on the lives of real people, especially if they are situated in rural communities.

If they were alive today, writers such as William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe might as well forget it.

Why Are Books Perceived as "Literature" Unpopular?

In a recent post that can be found here, I mentioned that writing a book that can only be labeled as "literature" (as opposed to thriller,  detective story, romance novel or some other popular genre) is a kiss of death in the current milieu.

I mention that because in a letter to the editor published in the May 6, 2016 NYT  book review section, William F Wallace, of Brandon, Miss., concludes his missive as follows: "so readers don't buy too many books they suspect are 'literature.' Have you noticed that?"

Well, I'm sure The Times, along with the publishing industry has, indeed, noticed that.

Which begs the question "why don't people want to read such books?"

Mental Health Topics and YA Literature

"At a time when young adult literature is actively picking away at the stigma of mental illness, Whaley carves off a healthy chunk with style, sensitivity and humor," says Neal Shusterman, reviewing a book called "Highly Illogical Behavior," in The New York Times.

As regular readers know, young adult, or YA, literature is one of my favorite topics because it appears to be the one genre of fiction experiencing significant growth.

Aspects of a NYT Article on Book Clubs For Men Only

The New York Times  has an article about book clubs for men only, which you can read in full by clicking on the hyperlink under those words.

I'm not going to address the ins and outs of that notion, which seems reasonable enough, but rather quickly mention two topics contained within the article because they relate to earlier posts on this blog.

The first club mentioned in the article is located in Marin, California, and it has what was described as a cardinal rule:  no books by women about women. While the members of the club were apparently thinking mostly of "chic lit" as something they aren't interested in reading, when it comes to popular fiction in general, they don't have too much to worry about. See my earlier post entitled "Male Characters Dominate Fiction."

Replying to E-Mail Like Something Out of a Romance Novel

Google has for some time had an app called "Smart Reply" that can generate responses to your email for you if you find that task too tedious. But the responses, composed by Google's artificial intelligence (AI) engine, have apparently been on the tedious side, themselves.  Too factual, not particularly conversational.

That's apparently about to change according to an article published by BuzzFeed.

More on Secular Epiphanies, and the American Sublime

A short while back. I wrote a post about encountering a poet sitting at his typewriter at a local farmers market who would write a poem, on the spot, on any topic one might propose. I proposed "epiphany, in the non-religious sense," made a modest contribution to his well being and was asked to return in 15 minutes. You can see the result and read more about that here.

When I subsequently searched for his website, I discovered that poetry-on-demand is readily available and apparently has been for some time.

One particular writer, Jacqueline Suskin, caught my eye and I asked her for a poem on the same topic to see how her notion of the concept might differ from that of the first poet, William Curtis. To be fair, she had more time to think it over and received a somewhat larger contribution to her well being, but an affordable one nonetheless.